11.5 Mile Hike...Disappointed

Last week or the week before my boyfriend and I were talking about things that we wanted to do this summer.  One of the things he mentioned was going exploring and by exploring he means hiking!  He said that every weekend that it was nice and not super bad weather he wants to go hiking.  So last weekend (Memorial Weekend) we actually did a couple of hikes that gave us a two-day total of about 10 - 12 miles.  Come Tuesday when I went back to work, my legs and my butt were killing me!

This week we have been dog sitting.  He talked about going hiking on Tiger Mountain and I said that I was game.  I started making mental notes about going to the store and getting food that will tide us over while we were hiking because we would definitely need it...the trail he was looking at is a 13 mile round trip hike.

Well we ended up hiking on Cougar Mountain today instead.  It was a total let down!  For starters, we grabbed one of the free paper maps that has all the trails on it.  It did not have all of the trails on it or if it did, some of them were mislabeled because we took a right onto a trail that should have taken us to a waterfall and it ended up being some different trail that we did not anticipate taking.

Most of the hiking was uphill.  Now I understand that we were hiking on a mountain but when I say "most" I mean that it was not half uphill and half downhill.  I would say that about 70 - 75% of the hiking was uphill.  It would have been totally worth it if there were some lookout points or peaks that had incredible views.  The lookout trail that we were following ended and there was not a view point anywhere to be seen.  There were several "peaks" that we apparently reached with no beautiful view.

While the park itself was quite and clean, there were times where the trails were literally only wide enough for half a person (which I did not mind) but all you could see was trees and dirt and the random snails, slugs and caterpillars.  We heard some pretty bird songs and the random child yelling but overall it was quite and peaceful.

I have to admit that I had some difficulty with the uphill climbs at times.  I have to seek the advice of my doctor because I looked at my hands at one point because I could not close them into fists and my hands were so swollen that you could not tell where my knuckles were or see my wrist bone and I could not extend my fingers all the way straight.  I was breathing fine but it was like I was having an allergic reaction that was only affecting my hands.

After the accidental .52 mile downhill trek that we made that set us back about a mile, we completed our hike of 11.5 miles in 3 hours and 31 minutes.  Now that was active walking.  From the time we left the parking lot it was about 4 hours round trip.  Not bad at all.  That was with three people (one of my boyfriend's co-workers) and two dogs (the one that we are watching and BF's co-worker's dog) with only a couple of stops to drink water, feed the dogs, decipher the horrible map and horrible trail markers.

We are all going to sleep really good tonight and we might possibly partake in a 7.2 mile hike tomorrow to Lake Serene which I think I posted about a couple of summers ago.

Until next time!

Adventure Day

I thought today was going to be just a lazy Sunday.  I thought I would spend the day lounging around, playing on the computer and watching movies or tv shows on Netflix.  I woke up this morning and was checking out Facebook and I noticed a friend had posted that she went on a hike and it tracked her distance, time and even her calories that she had burned.  It got me thinking about an app I had downloaded onto my Droid 2.  It's called RunKeeper.  It can be accessed on the web at runkeeper.com.  I decided to see all of what it had to offer.  I explored it on my phone and then went online and linked it to my Twitter and Facebook accounts and decided to take it for a test drive.

My boyfriend and I drove out to Cape Arago and went hiking on one of the trails.  It tracks how far you go by GPS but for some reason my phone wouldn't pick up a signal.  It took about 1.5 miles up the trail before I finally got a signal.  By the time we got back it said that we had hiked over three miles (so in reality it was over four and probably close to five) and said that it had taken us under 2 hours and I had burned almost 500 calories.

I think I have fallen in love with this app.  I might try it out tomorrow and go for a run and see how it does that way.  I posted it to Facebook and Twitter and on our way back we stopped at the General Store and picked up some liquor and then hit Walmart where we got the rest of what we needed to hit the beach and roast some hot dogs!  We just got back and it was great.  I mean it was just the two of us and it could have been more fun if there were others there but I had a few hot dogs, he cooked up some steak pieces and we had a couple of s'mores.

Now I think it's just about time to type up a rough draft of a Fitness Resume.  I figured it would be good to have one strictly for trying to get jobs teaching Zumba.  Have the dates of when I got my licenses and how long I have been teaching those classes and whatnot.  I figured that if I were trying to get a job working at a gym just to work there then my normal resume would work but for getting a job specific to the training that I have would be a good idea to have a separate one.

Until next time!